


Trousers of Time

by Elvendork



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2019-08-08 11:02:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16428125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elvendork/pseuds/Elvendork
Summary: A place to drop unconnected little scenes that come to me and won't go away but also, at present, refuse to develop into a full story.





	1. Half a Mystery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I see this as set somewhere around Men at Arms or Feet of Clay, but as long as it's before Night Watch then you can picture it wherever works for you.

Vimes was a thug, but an intriguing one, largely because he expended a great deal of time and energy trying to be better than himself. In Vetinari’s experience most people were more concerned with appearing better than _other people_ , and then only in very specific and profit-making ways.

Vimes was not a great thinker, all things considered, but he was a useful man nevertheless; increasingly so, in fact. This was irksome, but interesting. Mostly Vimes’s muscles and his rage did the thinking for him, but he overruled them moment by moment.

Occasionally, at this point in his musings, the flicker of another thought would make itself known to Vetinari, but so far this had not come to anything.

Vimes was a mystery.

At least, he was half a mystery.

The most perplexing thing was, Vetinari was in the unusual position of suspecting – and only suspecting, mind – that he already had the other half of the mystery and just couldn’t get them to connect.

It was not a feeling he relished, though he had not risen to his current position by being a man who could not tolerate a measure of frustration in his life.

Havelock Vetinari was a patient man.


	2. A Guard's Funeral

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Technically this chapter carries a "character death" warning, but it's set way in the future and deals with a brief look at a funeral, rather than the details of the actual death or immediate aftermath.

There were always only guards at a guard’s funeral, and this _was_ a guard’s funeral.

There had been a public memorial ceremony for His Grace the Duke of Ankh yesterday. It had been very well attended. The _Times_ had dedicated almost a whole page, including colour pictures, to the event.

Somehow, by general unspoken consensus, it had been decided that Sam Vimes would be laid to rest quietly in the Small Gods’ Cemetery with lilac blooms trailing across his modest grave and not a dress uniform in sight. The chosen plot was only a few steps away from an old but carefully tended headstone belonging, apparently, to one John Keel.

No one was quite clear whose suggestion that had originally been, but equally no one had objected.

There were always only guards at a guard’s funeral, and perhaps the odd family member.

The thing was, there were a lot more guards than there used to be. The gathered mourners nearly filled the little cemetery. 

Detritus lowered the coffin into the plot and Sybil threw the first handful of clinging dirt, silent tears streaming down her face. Captain Carrot – no one had quite gotten used to referring to him as _Commander_ yet – said a few words, and Young Sam said a few more, one arm around his mother’s trembling shoulders and the other held firmly in his little daughter’s hand.

No one paid much mind to the slim, grey-haired man on the edge of the crowd, leaning rather heavily on an elegant cane. He couldn’t be anyone important; the important people were gathered close to the graveside. He was far enough away that he could hardly be said to be attending at all.

There were always only coppers at a copper’s funeral, and Vimes had been a copper to his bones.


	3. Koom Valley

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Have some young Sybil, because I love her and I'm re-reading Thud! at the moment.

Sybil Ramkin had a great many friends, because the girls one went to school with were automatically considered one’s friends, and it would never have occurred to her to label them otherwise.

She did not, however, spend very much time with them outside school. This did not concern her greatly. She was happily self-contained, quite bright, and disposed to be kind to all deserving creatures and most undeserving ones, too.

She would never have thought of herself as lonely. She merely spent a lot of time on her own.

On her own, or else in the company of a few hundred meticulously painted little figures on a fifty foot long painting that her grandfather let her use as a sort of play mat. She used to lay across it and peer into the dwarf’s faces, making up names and stories for them, imagining she knew them.

She had once driven herself to sympathetic tears at the thought of all those lives lost in that desolate, hellish place, and still she came back and back to the painting.

Studying dwarf history at school had turned out to be the perfect excuse to get it out again.

Her scale copy had turned out rather well, in the end. Once it had been shown at school she had brought it back home and had it hung up on her bedroom wall. Later, when it was taken down, it had been stored away and half forgotten.

You never knew what might prove useful someday.


	4. Sam

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No idea where this one came from, but it's been floating around for a while refusing to develop into a full plot (yet). Enjoy.

It is late in the dark evening of a quiet day, which means something is almost  _ required _ to go wrong.

Vimes is therefore not entirely surprised when the door behind his deep armchair creaks open and Willikins primly informs him that they have a visitor.

“His Lordship, ah, asks that you go to him directly, Sir. He was most insistent.”

“His  _ Lordship _ ?” Vimes repeats incredulously. This he had not expected.

‘Yes, Sir.”

Vimes opens his mouth, closes it, rolls his eyes, and makes to stand.

“The tradesman’s entrance, Sir,” Willikins adds hurriedly.

“... What?”

“I believe he wished to avoid being observed, Sir.”

When Vimes makes it to the back door, he finds it open. Vetinari is there, one arm disappearing into his robe over his abdomen, the other holding him propped against the door frame. He is pale - paler even than usual, if possible - but his pinched expression changes when he catches sight of Vimes. Vimes does not have time to ponder the meaning of this.

“Sam,” Vetinari says, barely more than a whisper. He says it like another man might say “help”, or “please”. He says it like another man might pray.

And then he collapses.


End file.
